We have vegetation!

What's green, pretty and lively? Our new planters! We decided to go with mostly native plants because they require less water and are more likely to thrive in our climate.

These are Lantana. They can survive a nuclear explosion. They will take over if you don't keep up with the pruning.

Bulbine are one of our favorites! They have little orange and yellow flowers. They're not native, but they like our hot Austin sun!

Russian Sage and Salvia attract bees. We like bees.

This Yucca shoots up coral colored stalks in the spring. Gorgeous!

The whole shebang!

Just wait until it all grows in!

Planters in the front yard, part deux

What's this handful of loveliness? It's decomposed granite, and it's going in our walkway. It compacts easily, and it looks great against our steel planter. However, it's not soft and cushy, so I don't recommend it for areas where little ones will often be playing.

Here's where we began to fill the area with the granite. We had a lot of this stuff delivered. I think it was 3 cubic yards.

And here's our lovely steel planters that Mr. Venture built himself out of steel plate, angle, nuts and bolts.

 

We went for the terraced look, which I ended up loving. 

 

And voila! All the planters and granite are installed and cleaned up. Next comes some pavers for the walkway and some plants for the planters. Until next time...

What plants would you put in this front yard? Leave us a note in the comments!

Make way for the garden!

First off, please ignore the part of the photo where I'm blurry, making a weird face and running out of the shot. Mr. Venture loves to catch me running out of the photo, because he knows how much I hate being photographed. (He's sick and twisted.)

After installing the new fence out front, we decided it was time to put in a walkway and modern planter. Mr. Venture used a sod cutter to remove the grass from the area first, and we transplanted the sod to some bare places in the back yard. Next he leveled out the dirt, and staked out the path for the walkway so that it would be straight.

I'm leaving you with a cliffhanger today. You've seen the prep work, and you can see the finished product tomorrow. For now, just visualize how nice a clean walkway and nice planter will look in this area. (And we have taken a slight break from posting about the interior. Never fear, back to that soon.)

Fenced In

Check out our lovely lattice fence. It guards a pile of rocks and the trash can. Isn't it pretty?

This fence really bugged Mr. Venture. It really served no purpose, and it was ugly. So, he kept the posts and made a modern fence out of 1x1 cedar. He left extra room for a walkway leading to the front door. Later, the pile of rocks will be transformed into a lovely garden, and the trash can will find a new home that isn't within 3 feet of the front door.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Finishing the Kitchen... Maybe

First comes drywall. Then comes paint, and cabinet installation, and plumbing, and more paint. There's a lot to talk about in this post, so let me break it down for you.

Paint

We wanted to go with a nice neutral gray for the kitchen and hallway. What we got was ugly with a splash of violet. And the bright red accent wall in the dining area wasn't doing it for us either. I believe we painted these areas a total of 4 colors before finding ones we could live with. Did I mention that I hate painting? Well, I do. A lot.

Tip: If you want a warm gray that's indeed warm and neutral, we finally landed on (and love!) Sherwin Williams Worldly Gray (SW 7043). In fact, all the colors on that card are nice, and we used may of them.  

Cabinets

We initially purchased Ikea cabinets in their Nexus Birch finish, because we were told that the Nexus Black-Brown finish was being discontinued. We later decided that we weren't huge fans of the light color of the birch, so we purchased the black-brown when it was re-introduced. This was not a smart budget decision. We should have either sprung for a finish that we liked better in the first place, or just lived with the birch. Oh well, live and learn. 

As for the installation, it was a breeze. The cabinets are easy to put together and hang. It took the two of us a few hours to do. 

Flashback

 

Remember when this used to be the kitchen? Now it's the dining room, and it has a lovely opening into the living room. It flows so much better. It feels bigger and more open. That door is eventually going away and there will be a ton of windows added. And obviously the fridge will find a home elsewhere. 

Drywall: The Devil's Work

 

Drywall dust is the bane of my existence. It gets everywhere. It invades every hidden nook and cranny of the house. It gets in your hair, on your clothes, in your mouth. Blerg! On a positive note, I think our final drywall installing days are over! We hired a pro in the new house to install it! Enjoy some views of our process.

If you're wondering what the process of installing drywall, let me give you a quick rundown. (This is by no means comprehensive. I just want to give a better picture of how this process works.)

Installing Drywall

1. Measure the space you want the drywall to go, and then cut the drywall to fit that space. If installing full sheets, the drywall goes in horizontally rather than vertically. 
2. Using a drill, put screws in the drywall making sure you hit studs. 
3. Cover all joints with tape (we prefer fiberglass) and mud over joints. Also fill in screw holes with mud. It's best to make all the mud as smooth and flush as possible, so that you have to sand less. 
4. After the mud dries (this takes a day or two), sand all mud smooth. Safety note: wear a mask or respirator for this. It's nasty! Mr. Venture likes to "sand" with a damp sponge when the mud is still wet but very firm, because it produces less dust. You have to make sure the sponge is not too wet.
5. Mud over joints and holes again, but less thickly. 
6. Let dry and sand again.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until your wall is smooth.
8. Pass out from exhaustion and promise to hire a professional next time.

Do you have any drywall experience? Do you hate it as much as I do? Leave a comment and tell me about it!

Demolition: The Final Chapter

If you're wondering what's more satisfying than taking out aggressions by tearing down walls and smashing up tile, then I have your answer: finishing demolition. When you're done breaking down, then you can start building up and putting together. Check out the final state of the house before we started making it pretty. (Please excuse the blurry photos. Our camera was having issues.)

Remember when I told you that I didn't have any "before" pictures of the bathroom. This is as close as we're going to get. If you see the lighter spots on the floor, that's where walls used to be. You can see how narrow the bathroom used to be. We decided that we wanted a bigger bathroom, so we decided we could sacrifice a little closet space in the adjacent bedroom/office.

Demolition

We wasted no time when it came to starting demolition. As soon as we had the keys in our hands, we promptly went on a Home Depot shopping spree for tools and then headed to our new home to destroy it.

There was a pesky wall separating the kitchen area from the living room. You can see the old gas line hanging down. (We hired a plumber to move that. We don't like explosions.) You can also see some electrical wire up top that I would later electrocute myself on while trying to measure something. I'm talented. We also decided to flip the location of the kitchen and dining room. It gave us more room for cabinets and made a more open feel.

We like to use the carport as storage for unwanted house junk because it makes our neighbors happy. (We were waiting for the dumpster to arrive.)

Humble Beginnings

I figured the best place to start was the beginning. (Duh!) The Mr. and I bought our first fixer-upper in 2007, located in the lovely city of Austin, TX. It was built in 1965, and not a thing had been updated since.

We chose this house for a few reasons: It was in our price range; it was centrally located; it was as close to mid-century modern as we could afford. 

This is the living room, looking onto the dining room. You can see the front door on the left and the lovely rug hiding the vinyl tile that covered every square inch of the floor.

Here's the dining room from the view of the spacious kitchen.

And the kitchen. You couldn't open two cabinets without them touching. The appliances were original, and also a fire hazard.

The windows had these cool screens on them. The downside was that they blocked a lot of light.

The house also came with free pets. Lots of them.

I realized that we didn't take any photos of the bathroom. Take my word for it, it was not pretty. Wallpaper from the '70s, cabinets that were tapered so that they could actually fit into the room, funky tile. Maybe it's better that we saved you from having to see it. You can thank me later.

This is the back of the house. The roof over the porch will soon be removed. It was installed poorly, which has rotted out the eaves. Please ignore me traipsing, unaware through the yard. If you're wondering about all the weird fences, the previous owner raised German Shepards. There's also sheet metal on the walls in the laundry room to protect it from scratching.

And finally, our beautiful Live Oak. It's old, large and shady. It makes the back yard feel comfy.